Finding and changing

Like most popular word processors, InDesign lets you find text and replace it. You can also search for and change formatting and special characters.

Finding text and changing formatting

You will search for occurrences of the word “TravelNE” in this document. Make sure that your view-magnification level is set so that you can easily read the text and see the formatting. You do not have to have anything selected for this procedure.

The author of the main article used underline instead of italics to indicate the name of the tour group. You want to remove the underlining and replace it with italics.

1.

Choose Edit > Find/Change. For Find What, type TravelNE.

2.

Press Tab to move to the Change To box, and make certain that the Change To box is empty. For Search, make sure Document is selected.

These settings tell InDesign to search all text frames throughout the document for the word TravelNE and to keep the same word. Next we will tell InDesign to change the format of the words it locates.

3.

Click More Options to display additional formatting options in the dialog box.

Leave the other check boxes as they are: either with green boxes (Windows) or dashes (Mac OS). These marks indicate attributes that are irrelevant to the search—they will not act as criteria for the search. Click OK to return to the Find/Change dialog box.

Notice the alert icon () above the Find what box. This icon indicates that InDesign will search for text containing the specified formatting. In this case, InDesign will search for underlined occurrences of “TravelNE.”

7.

Under Change Format Settings, click Format to open the Change Format Settings dialog box, and set all the following options:

On the left side of the dialog box, choose Basic Character Formats.

On the right side, use the drop-down menus to select Adobe Garamond Pro for Font Family and Italic for the font style. (Adobe Garamond is alphabetized on the list under “G,” not “A.”)

Click Change All. A message appears, telling you that InDesign found and changed the three occurrences of the underlined word “TravelNE.”

9.

Click OK to close the message, and then click Done to close the Find/Change dialog box. Then save the file.

Before and after finding and changing attributes.

Finding and changing special characters

The text in the sidebar on page 1 currently uses hyphens between page numbers (such as Pages 1-3) instead of en dashes. You will replace these hyphens (-) with en dashes (–).

1.

Turn to page 1, and use the Zoom tool () to magnify the “In this Issue:” text frame.

2.

Using the Type tool (), click inside the “In this Issue:” sidebar.

3.

Press Ctrl+F (Windows) or Command+F (Mac OS) to open the Find/Change dialog box.

In this case, you want InDesign to replace only the hyphens in the text frame on the first page, so you will limit the search range to only the story, which consists solely of the sidebar frame.

4.

For Search, choose Story to narrow the search to only the sidebar.

5.

For Find what, delete the word “TravelNE” and type - (a hyphen).

6.

Press Tab to shift focus to the Change To box. Click the arrow button () to the right of the Change To box and choose En Dash from the drop-down menu. The Change To field is populated by ^= (a caret and equal sign), a code for the en dash character.

7.

Under Find Format Settings, click Clear. Then click Clear under Change Format Settings. This clears the underline attribute you searched for in your last search, so that InDesign will not look for underlines in this step.

8.

Click Change All.

The three hyphens are replaced by en dashes in the sidebar.

Note

If you are notified that considerably more than three changes were made, you may have forgotten to choose Story instead of Document for search, or you didn’t click an insertion point inside the sidebar frame. Choose Edit > Undo Replace Text and try again.

9.

Click OK to close the message, and then click Done to close the Find/Change dialog box. Save the file.

Finding and changing a missing font

When you opened the document based on the template, the Party LET font may have been missing. We include this font in this lesson, as it is not commonly used. If you have this font installed on your computer, you will not receive a warning indicator, but can follow along with the steps. You will now search for text containing the Party LET font and replace it with the Myriad Pro Bold font.

1.

In the Pages palette, double-click the page 8 icon (you may need to scroll in the Pages palette). Choose View > Fit Page in Window. The pink highlight indicates that the text is formatted with a missing font.

2.

Choose Type > Find Font to open the Find Font dialog box. This dialog box lists all fonts used in the document and the type of font—such as PostScript, True Type, or Open Type. Missing fonts are indicated by an alert icon ().

3.

Select Party LET in the list.

4.

For Replace With, select Myriad Pro from the Font Family menu, and Bold from the Font Style menu.

5.

Click Change All. Click Done to close the dialog box and see the replaced font in the document.

Note

For your own projects, you may need to add the missing font to your system instead of replacing the missing font. You can fix missing fonts by installing the font on your system, by activating the font using font management software, or by adding the font files to the InDesign Fonts folder. For more information, see Installing Fonts in InDesign Help.